Jekyll and Hyde
by AthenaJanethePrettyLittleLiar
Summary: After spending a summer grieving over the loss of Alison and upon the finding of Ali's dead body before the start of the school year, Jason and Aria find themselves in a very messy predicament in which they learn to lean on each other, trust each other, and find their own happiness together. (AU-Alternate Universe).
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1:

"_The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?__"_

_-Edgar Allen Poe_

Her reflection was the first thing she saw. In shattered pieces, scattered across the gravel, her own bloody, marred face stared back at her, looking as dizzy and incoherent as she felt. Her hand quickly went to the pavement beneath her body in an attempt to pull herself upward, her palm immediately colliding with a sharp slice of glass. She sucked in a breath and closed her eyes shut, rolling back onto her side and pulling the glass out from beneath the surface of her skin. She grimaced as she beheld the blood that ran from her palm, onto her already-red-splattered sleeve, which hovered multiple cuts and bruises.

Her head was killing her.

In a haze, she struggled to remember the circumstances as to why she was there, on the ground, in the middle of the road, finally conscious. The iron smell of her own blood filled her nostrils, blocking her thought process.

"Aria?"

A familiar voice brought with it a swarm of memories, hitting her like a ton of bricks.

His face.

The car.

The road.

The man.

The crash.

The sound of tires screeching on gravel, the feel of her stomach turning as the car was flipped off the side of the road, and she was hurled from the vehicle, sent tumbling about, amid the piles of shattering glass, onto the pavement. The sound of her scream as her head cracked against the hard ground, and the panicked sound of his voice – just as she had heard it only moments ago – calling out her name.

"Aria?"

She was finally able to roll onto her stomach, bracing her forearm beneath her, and hoisting herself into a semi-kneeling position. Her head was spinning, and she struggled to keep herself upright. She could hear the sound of broken glass shuffling and suddenly, she could feel his breath at her ear.

"Oh, God, Aria…" He sounded terrified, panicked, but like he could scarcely get a breath as well.

"Mmm?" She tried to say, blinking a few times. His hands were at her shoulders, and he carefully pulled her into his arms, his fingers anxiously pushing her hair from her eyes, turning her face towards him.

"Are you okay?" He asked.

"Mm…" Aria nodded. "I think so…" She said, her voice dry and sober. Her free, bleeding hand reached up to touch the side of her head, and when she lowered it back down, a fresh layer of blood coated her palm.

"How bad are you bleeding? Did you break anything?" He asked.

She shook her head. "I don't think I broke anything." She replied hoarsely. Still a bit uncoordinated, she closed her eyes tight, trying to remember what had happened. Where was she? Why…why was she on the road so late? Why was she with him? Where did she meet him?

When she opened her eyes, her gaze fell on a shoe, connected to a foot, connected to a third body, strewn across the pavement, face-down on the ground.

"Oh, God. Oh, God, Jason." Her eyes went wide and she started to panic. "What…did we…?"

"I think he's dead." Jason chocked out, and Aria put a hand over her mouth, her pulse pounding in her ears, her heart beating in her throat.

Oh God.

The man.

The blood.

The wreck.

* * *

_"I don't think you're as different as you want everyone to think you are."_

_ "Really?" She looked over at him, a soft smile on her face, "And how do you figure that?" She took another sip from the flask, tasting the burnt-wood-and-chemical taste of Scotch, but swallowing it anyway. _

_ Her fingernails were bright red, like cherries, as she tapped them against the dashboard to the tune of the song. What was it again? Fleetwood Mac? M83?_

_ "The hair, the clothes, the black makeup…it was all a mask. You're different, but not in the way that you think." He replied, and she could see his coy grin in the low light of the moon, amid the darkness of the car. Through her haze of alcohol, she could still make out his eyes, as they flickered from the road and then back to her face._

_ "You're special. Why don't you want anyone to see that?"_

* * *

Her eyes opened and she gasped aloud.

"Jason…" She whispered softly, shaking her head slowly. "What do we do?" She could feel tears well up in her eyes, and her voice quivered.

Kneeling beside her, he tightened his arms around her. "I don't know."

The blood on her hands.

Was it hers?

Was it his?

Was it…_his?_

"How did this happen?" She asked, her voice just a breath.

He didn't answer, but instead shakily got to his feet, and began to approach the body. She looked up at him, getting a better look at the damage that had been done to him: a few cuts across his face, his knuckles bleeding, and he was limping on one of his legs.

"What do we do, Jason?" She asked again. Her eyebrows were furrowed, and she was close to sounding desperate.

He knelt down by the body, wincing a bit as did so, and grasped each of the man's ankles. He tugged the body upward so that it slumped against the gravel.

"Come on, help me pull." He told her, looking at her like he really meant it, "Can you stand?"

Aria just looked at him, her lips parted, blinking a few times. Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He continued to stare back at her, his hands still grasping the body's ankles. "Well?"

"Jason…"

"Aria, we have to get out of here, fast. Before you lose too much blood or someone finds us. Now, can you stand? Can you help me?"

"Where would we take it?"

"Over the trench. Into the river." He nodded towards the side of the windy road, where, indeed, a deep, bush-covered trench lay, surrounding the side of the cliff. A bent, spindly tree reached over the edge, with the wrecked car tight in its grip, twisted and held snuggly in its grasp. The braches stretched over the broken windows, and thorns punctured the already-thrashed tires.

Aria looked back at Jason. "We can call someone…"

"No." He replied grimly.

"Jason – "

"Aria, I don't think you understand the seriousness of what this is; this guy…is _dead_. Because of _us_. If anyone finds out that we did this, we're done."

"But it was an accident – "

"Doesn't matter. We were drunk driving. That's one platform to persecute against us for. And murder is murder; it doesn't matter what the context is."

"Jason, we can't run from this."

"What else can we do? If anyone finds out that I was wasted, it'll only be a matter of time before they find the rest of the stuff I have in the back of my closet."

"It was your choice to get high all summer, Jason. Not mine." She said seriously.

"Oh, have you forgotten the Fourth of July? Or are you just choosing not to remember it?"

"That was one time, Jason." Aria replied gravely.

"It doesn't matter; one time is enough to get you in trouble for your whole life. Your dreams of going off to college? Becoming a writer? Or a teacher? Done. Out the window faster than you can say 'trouble.'" Jason looked at her seriously. "So come on; help me pull."

She bit her lip and narrowed her eyes, watching him for a moment longer before hesitantly getting to her feet. A wave of vertigo hit her, and she put a hand to her head, immediately feeling dried blood there. She forced herself to stand up tall, and crossed over to meet him where the body lay on the pavement.

After one last look at Jason, she reached down and grasped the man's shoulders, trying to hoist him upwards. Her weakened, tired arms gave out beneath her, and Jason set the body down, rounding the side to switch places with her. The two of them worked over the body in silence, careful to remove any of the clothing they made contact with – the man's jacket, shoes, socks. Finally, when they were able to cross the road and hoist the body over the edge of the trench – after one last look at one another – they stood in silence along the cliff, staring down into the black hole, as the body disappeared within the shadows.

Aria was the first to speak. "He probably was someone, you know?"

"What?" Jason looked at her.

"You know, he probably had a family, and a job. A wife and kids of his own. Parents that loved him and a good life." She could feet her voice get thick as tears welled up in her eyes.

Jason didn't answer; he looked back down into the trench and ran a hand through his bloodied hair.

"And now all of that's gone; it's like it wasn't even there at all. He didn't even get a goodbye. Tomorrow, when his wife wakes up, she'll probably be worried about him. Sometime soon, they'll find his body here, all broken up and stowed away like it never meant anything. We'll hear about it all on the news, and our parents will say what a terrible shame it was, and we'll go back to just being those two Rosewood kids on the block. I'll still have that oak tree stump in my backyard where my tree house used to be, and you'll still be that guy whose sister died just last year. Nothing else will change; and yet, nothing will be the same for us after this." Aria shook her head. Her face was like a stone, stoic and unmoving as it all sunk in.

"Rosewood won't change. Even if this did get out, Rosewood would stay the same. We'd be put through hell, but then we'd disappear, like we didn't even exist. They'd talk about us from time to time – how we were sent to Juvie for killing an innocent man, like Toby Cavanaugh was shipped away for blinding his stepsister. But other than that, we'd just be one more problem this town has to deal with. One more thing they want to put away." Jason replied, his face the same mask of unfeeling. Suddenly, he reached out and took her hand, intertwining their fingers.

Just last week, that would have made Aria's heart race. It would have made her blush and sent a torrent of thoughts churning through her head. It would give her some mad hope that he liked her…

* * *

_"I think Ali would have liked that one." He had pointed to an old photograph of his little sister in pink, "she's showing off her 'good side.'"_

_ Aria giggled and picked the picture from the card table, holding it up to the light, "Yeah, she is!" She agreed, setting it down on a page of the scrapbook, beside a few other pictures showcasing her best friend. _

_ "It was really nice of you to make this, especially with the memorial coming up." Jason had said. He sat a little closer to her, and, naturally, her breath caught in her throat._

_ "Well, it's been a year – I thought it would be a good way to remember her."_

_ "We only just found her body last week…and yet…I feel like she's been gone this whole time. Like finding her was just telling me what I already knew."_

_ "Really? I guess I always pictured her…out there, somewhere. With some cute, foreign boy. Having a cup of coffee at a café in France. Wearing a filmy scarf and a flimsy sun hat. A pair of red sunglasses."_

_ Jason chuckled. "Ali at her finest."_

_ "Definitely. Probably changed her name to something glamorous."_

_ "Naturally." He laughed. She grinned and looked up at him. His face was closer than she thought, and her heart immediately skipped a beat._

_ She could feel his breath on her face, his eyes watching her. Could he even hear how fast her heart was beating?_

* * *

Nothing would ever be the same between them again. After that moment, everything changed. They were no longer just two stupid kids, with the younger desperately crushing on the older, but a pair of convicts, running from the truth, in it together for the long run. Involuntary partners in crime, damned to live a life of worry and apprehension.

"The river will carry the body away; in a few hours, it'll be somewhere miles away." Jason said.

Aria nodded. "Where do we go from here?" She asked. "It's too far to walk home."

"Noel and Eric Kahn's cabin is up here. Eric and I were friends in high school. He'll let us stay for the night."

"Will he even know we're there?"

"Not likely."

"We should start walking then." She whispered. He nodded. He kept holding her hand.

With a breath and one last look into the black trench, where the river subtly rushed along, they turned and began walking down the windy, dark road, their hands clasped between them.

The lonely moon hung over them, and in the quiet depths of the night, somewhere far away, a wolf howled a cry of agony.

**so this is the first Jaria fanfic I've written (after many many Spoby ones) and I thought it would be fun to try out! Please note - this story as an AU (Alternate Universe). Ezra isn't in the picture (bummer), and Aria didn't spend the year in Iceland. Hope you all like it! Your reviews keep the story going! And mean the world!**

**-AJ**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 – Rubik's Cube

"Do you think we'll be safe here?" Aria asked, shedding her torn outer jacket and setting it on the counter. She was shivering and her clothes were soaking wet, her sneakers dripping onto the carpet.

"We should be." Jason replied, stepping into the house behind her, shutting the door. Outside, a layer of rain pelted against the windows, and in the distance, thunder clapped overhead.

The inside of the Kahn's cabin was shadowy and warm. Aria felt along the walls with her numb fingertips, trying to locate a light switch. When she found it, she clicked it on, and the first floor glowed to life. Her eyes surveyed the room – it was very different from the way it had looked the last time she had been there. In the beginning of last summer, before Ali went missing and things went sour, Noel had had an end-of-the-year bash and invited Aria and all of her friends – as well as the entire freshman and sophomore class – to join in the fun. Now, the cabin was scarce and bare, with the absence of streamers, beer, and broken pieces of furniture. The living room was just a couch with a blanket thrown over the back, in front of a dark, hollow fireplace. A few armchairs were scattered about the room, and old magazines were strewn across the top of the coffee table. Aria could see that the door next to the couch led into the shadowy kitchen.

She turned back to Jason, "Do you know how to light a fire?"

He nodded, shedding his wet jacket and throwing it over the back of a chair. He approached the fireplace, found a large box of matches on the mantel, and in moments, had sparked a flame amongst the unused firewood within the hearth.

Aria turned her head to look out the window, immediately hit by a strike of vertigo. She grasped the back of a kitchen chair so tightly her knuckles turned white, her other hand flying to the back of her head where the wounds were the worst. Her eyes clenched shut. Jason looked back at her, rising to his feet and approaching her quickly. "Hey. You okay?" He asked, his hands reaching out to steady her.

She nodded. "Fine. Just a little dizzy."

"Aria, if you need me to take you to the hospital – "

"No." She insisted. "I'm fine." She assured him. "Really. I don't think I cracked my skull or anything – just some bad scrapes along my scalp."

"Are you sure you'll be alright until morning?" Jason looked at her uneasily, holding her upper arms in case she collapsed on the spot.

"Jason, I'm fine." She repeated. "Besides, it's pouring outside; I'd have a better chance of dying on the spot by catching pneumonia out there than losing too much blood here."

"Hey, you're still bleeding…" He said. His hand rose to the side of her face, gently patting at the outlines of a large, bloodied scrape that had cut surprisingly deep.

"I'm alright." She shook her head, breaking eye contact.

He put his hand beneath her chin and lifted her face so that he could look into her eyes again, "Will you at least let me clean it for you?"

Aria snorted, "Really, it's fine. And what would you even clean it with?"

"I know where Eric and Noel hide the First Aid Kit."

Aria shrugged. "Alright, if you want."

"I would really just rather not return you to your parents in the morning with your comatose body thrown over my shoulder." Jason replied dryly, and Aria laughed lightly.

"Alright." She said, and watched him enter one of the first bedrooms down the hall. She could hear him riffling through a closet.

Turning back to the living room, she sauntered over to the couch and gently flopped down onto it. The whole thing was…bizarre, that was the word for it. Bizarre.

Scary. Oh, it was scary.

Somehow, the seriousness of the situation hadn't exactly made an impact on her yet. It was all too much to wrap her mind around.

"Ah, found it!" Jason called from down the hall. Aria sat still, her eyes frozen to her ragged, bleeding fingernails. He entered the living room, rounding the couch and sitting on the coffee table in front of her so that their knees were touching.

"Hey. Aria. Aria? Hello? Anyone in there?" He chuckled slightly.

She nodded slowly, her eyes still narrowed in thought. Jason must have taken it as a confirmation to start disinfecting her cut, for he opened the first aid kit in his lap and pulled out a little box of Q-tips and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Her eyes centered on his hands as they unscrewed the cap and dipped one end of the Q-tip into the clear liquid.

"Head up." He told her gently, and she obeyed, raising her chin. He rested his wrist on her temple and gently dabbed the wet point of the Q-tip against the cut along her hairline. She sucked in a breath slightly as the acidic liquid bit into her already ragged skin.

"You know, I used to do this for Ali when she was little." Jason said absently. He drew back for a second to dip the other end of the Q-tip into the bottle, turning it over in his hand so that he could press the clean side to her cut. "She used to get hurt all the time over the summer. She used to try so hard to just be "one of the guys" so she could hang out with my friends and me; I can't even tell you how many times she wiped out on a skateboard. But she got back up, like it never happened, even if she had blood running down her knee."

Aria snorted and laughed, "Yeah, that sounds like Ali…" She confirmed.

"And at night, I'd help her sit down on the counter and clean out whatever wound she decided to put on herself."

Aria smiled bittersweetly, "I bet it made her laugh when you waited on her hand and foot like that."

Jason nodded, pushing back a strand of Aria's hair to clean more of the cut, "Yeah. She pretended like she was the queen of the house."

Aria snorted, "Psh, what are you talking about? Ali _was _the queen."

"Well, she sure thought she was." Jason laughed.

Aria laughed a little bit too, before it slowly died off and she let out a deep breath she didn't know she'd been holding. She shook her head slowly in awe, "God, we're so going to hell, Jason." She murmured softly. "We're practically sprinting there."

"Don't say that."

"Why? It's true. Pretty sure that murder kind of makes the list of 'Requirements for Hell.'"

"It was an accident."

"But doesn't lying about it kind of cancel out the accident part? If it really was an accident, we would have no reason to hide it."

"Aria, people get drunk and screw up all the time. We weren't even that wasted."

"I was. I don't know about you, but I was." Aria replied.

"Well, I wasn't. And the man just jumped out of no where."

"Doesn't make it any less of a murder. He died on our account. He died because we weren't careful. And now his family will never get the closure it needs because we're lying about what happened."

"Aria, just…don't talk about it, alright? We'll figure it out in the morning. Right now, all freaking out about it is doing is making you uneasy." Jason finally finished cleaning out the gash above her hairline and pressed a stiff band-aid over the surface of it. He gently let his hand rest on her cheek. Aria remembered when he had done that once before, touched her like that. It was barely a month ago, but it felt like eons…

* * *

_"Everything is going to change now, isn't it?" She murmured softly under her breath._

_ He nodded. "Yeah. I guess so." Jason was never one to beat around the bush, or tell you what you wanted to hear. He gave you the truth. No matter how harsh it was._

_ "It feels like just yesterday that she was here. In my living room laughing at some joke. Or chasing some lifeguard down at the lake. All this time…I guess I expected her to just show up one day. Smile at me and ask, 'What are you frowning about Aria? I'm right here, silly.'"_

_ Jason smiled. "Yeah. I guess I did, too."_

_ "I guess now…now I'm really going to have to get used to living life without her." Aria said. "But I don't want to let go just yet."_

_ "Me neither." Jason agreed solemnly. He looked over at her. "But I think we have to say goodbye, don't we?"_

_ Her feet were crossed at the ankles, stretched out on the step in front of her. Jason's front porch wasn't exactly the most private place to talk, but Jason hadn't left the spot all morning. He'd been sitting there, in his black suit, dressed for the service, but hadn't moved an inch. When Aria had looked at herself in the mirror that morning, she had felt about a million years old. Dressed up in her fancy black dress, with her hair ironed like her mother had done it for her as a child. She certainly _looked_ older. _

_ She was too young to say goodbye to someone she knew so well. They both were._

_ "It's weird; I've been out of the house for a while but…it isn't until now that I actually feel like an adult." Jason told her._

_ She nodded. "I know what you mean. I feel like I'm as old as my parents. Maybe even older. Yikes." She snorted. She peered over at him._

_ "Are you going to be alright?" He asked her, his eyes meeting hers. He reached out hesitantly, but ultimately decided to let his hand rest on her cheek. "I know it's probably hard for the four of you."_

_ Predictably, Aria's heart began to sputter and break into a trot. She swallowed hard, nodding. "Yeah. Yeah, I think I'll be alright."_

_ "If you ever need to talk…I'm here, ok?"_

_ "I know."_

* * *

Now, as his hand softly lied on her face, her heart didn't race. She didn't blush. She didn't sputter, trying to remember what the hell she was talking about in the first place. It felt…familiar.

Well, calming at least.

For the first time – in all of the years she had known him – she felt like his equal. They were in this mess together, both of them having done the same amount of wrong and were both as terrified as the other.

Somehow, she felt as though a bond had been made tonight. In the midst of all the chaos, they found their way on the other side together, tethered to one another by this dark, horrible secret.

She knew that the lying was only going to get worse.

"Should we sleep on the couch?" She asked finally, breaking the silence. "I don't want to get the sheets all dirty with blood."

Jason nodded grimly. "I think I might take a shower beforehand; I'm pretty filthy."

"No worse than me." The side of Aria's mouth quirked up and she gave a shrug.

Jason got to his feet, "I'll see you in a little bit. Do you need anything?" He asked.

She shook her head. "I'm fine. Just…go take your shower."

He looked at her for another long moment, narrowing his eyes and searching her face for hidden emotion. Finally, he gave up and retreated to the bathroom down the hall.

Aria stared at the newly lit fire, the flames dancing along the charred piece of wood. Getting carefully to her feet, she approached it and knelt before it, extending her frigid hands to its welcoming warmth. She peeled off her outer layer – a new sweater that her mother had just bought her and was now basically in shreds – and laid it on the ground in front of it to dry. She sat there, in the while camisole and soaking jeans, peeling off her socks and setting them beside her shirt. Most of the blood on her arms had died, but she feared that the cut on her thigh had been adhered by her blood to the rips in her jeans.

_Whatever_, she thought, _I'll deal with the injuries tomorrow._

With that, she picked up the throw blanket that was cast across the back of the sofa, wrapping it around herself, and laid down beside her drying clothes, silhouetted by the warm glow of the fire. The sound of the old water heater cranking and the shower gushing down the hall lulled her to sleep.

* * *

When she dreamed, she dreamt of Ali. Smiley Ali, crazy Ali, happy Ali. Ali running in front of her through the soccer field by Rosewood High, looking over her shoulder at her, her long blonde curls bouncing around her grinning face…

Suddenly, the scene shifted, and Aria was no longer running through the freshly mowed grass of the field, but rather standing on a dark road, illuminated by the hellish smolder of car headlights. Ali wasn't running in front of her, but rather lying before her on her side, in the same yellow shirt she wore on her last day on Earth. The only difference was that there were huge holes ripped in the back of it, and her usually soft blonde hair was matted and tangled.

She could hear Jason's voice, too. Calling to her, standing right in front of her, yet sounding a thousand miles away. He reached for her, shook her shoulders, shouting in her face, then motioning towards Ali's body, stretched out before them. Suddenly, streams of blood began pooling from her body, out of the tears in her shirt, and everything was fuzzy, in slow motion.

Jason still sounded as though he was speaking through a pillow as he reached down for Ali's marred body, hoisting it upwards, dragging it away, and preparing to

cast it over the side of the cliff…

* * *

With a gasp, Aria jerked awake, jolting upward so fast that she twisted a muscle in her sore neck. She cringed, her fingers reaching for the sprained area.

"Whoa, hey, are you alright?" Jason's voice asked, and she looked over her shoulder to see him there, sitting beside her. His hair was still damp from his shower, and he had changed back into his singed t-shirt and ratty jeans. She wondered idly how long he had been sitting there, watching her sleep, and if he had gotten any shut-eye of his own.

"How long have you…?"

"Just a little while. You were shivering a bit, so I brought you another blanket." He replied, and she looked down to see her body, indeed, swathed in a second layer of wool.

"You know, you're actually kind of funny when you sleep." Jason offered, his eyes flickering from the flame of the fire to her face, "You scowl a lot."

"Well, I wasn't exactly dreaming sweetly." She answered, tightening the blanket around her. Should it creep her out that he was watching her sleep…?

But they were past embarrassment, weren't they?

"You should get some sleep, Jason." She said.

"I will. Later." He replied, scooting down so that his back could rest against the coffee table, and his feet were stretched out before the fire.

"What are we going to do tomorrow, Jason?" Aria murmured softly, her dead eyes on the fire.

He shrugged. "I don't know." He said, "We'll figure it out."

"How are we supposed to move on from this?" She whispered.

"We'll find a way."

"What like, get high again?" She snapped, her voice slightly high pitched from the lump in her throat.

Jason didn't answer, but instead shook his head, "Aria…"

"Just…go to sleep." She told him, lying back down, "I'm going to."

She closed her eyes and felt him gently put a hand on her back. For the first time in almost a year, Aria cried herself to sleep.

**thanks for the reviews!**

**AJ**


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